Django Unchained

The world's first western blaxploitation revenge buddy comedy, Django Unchained is one of Quentin Tarantino's best movies—a brutal, hilarious, thrilling, messy bastard of a thing. It's the result of Tarantino gleefully making a balls-out western after years of almost doing so. Like Inglourious Basterds—another film where Tarantino reduced history to pulp, both factually and viscerally—there's a lot to unpack in Django, be it the boiling-down of America's fucked-up past into melodrama or Tarantino's continued indulgence of his second-favorite fetish after Uma Thurman's feet. (Here, at least, there's more context for the N-word than in Pulp Fiction.) That's for later viewings, though: On first watch, Django is simply a hell of a lot of fun—visceral and clever and operatic, with Jamie Foxx's deadpan humor barely hiding his righteous fury as Leonardo DiCaprio's baby face smiles and smiles and smiles until it splits apart in rage. And that's not even getting into Samuel L. Jackson, or that gunfight, or what is—I'm fairly certain—the only and best scene ever filmed that features the KKK, Don Johnson, and Jonah Hill.
(ERIK HENRIKSEN)